In Which Danny is Very Salty
by Pseudinymous
Summary: A local cult starts to worship Phantom, and one of its members starts picketing outside Casper High. Phic Phight / Team Ghost / Prompt by GothMoth


**Author's Note:**

Here. Just have it. Read it. Why not?

* * *

**Phic Phight / Team Ghost**

_Prompt: A small cult starts up around worshiping Phantom, a member starts preaching outside of Casper high._

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"I can't take this anymore. It's been three days!" said Danny, loudly, not even caring about being overheard now that everyone had just been evacuated. "Three days! Of saving this lunatic again and again and again! And yeah, it's so funny that he thinks Wes Weston is Phantom, but now he's been telling any ghost that'll listen to him and _they're starting to attack Wes too_!"

Danny stopped to breathe for a moment. He needed to catch back up to it in the middle of this tirade, but then he caught sight of the guy standing out in front of the school through the window again. "Look at him — he's still standing there, holding up that stupid Phantom cult banner! What the heck did I do to deserve a _religion_?"

Sam blinked at him. "Uhh, you saved the town countless times in the plain visible public eye, declared your name was Danny Phantom, paraded yourself around enjoying the attention, and then pretended you didn't like it?"

Danny twitched within his chair. "Okay, okay! I get it. So — so I soaked up the sun a little, it's not wrong to want attention! Just not _this_ attention!"

Sam's brow was raised as she peered out the window. "Oh, look, he's starting to do a handstand."

Danny risked another look outside for less than a moment, scoffed, then returned to his scornful seat and crossed his scornful arms and continued to look utterly scornful. Sam obviously enjoyed this too much.

"You're cute when you're annoyed, you know that?"

"I'm a ghost!" he snapped. "I'm supposed to be terrifying!"

Fifty seven kilograms of pure goth style sat down next to him, and she put her arm around his shoulder. "People make religions about terrifying things too. Where do you think all of this gothic occult stuff comes from, anyway?"

Danny's head hit the desk. "Not from me. I'm the town superhero and local god, apparently."

With the school empty, they were alone in here to listen to the madman preach outside. His emphatic screaming even seemed to float in through the window panes — apparently if you burned pure red hair as a sacrifice such that the smoke would rise the sky, Wes Weston would receive this energy and ascend to even greater heights.

"At least it's entertaining!" said Sam, with a grin.

Danny moped, his face still smushed into the table. "I'm actually gonna hurl."

What a way to start a Friday morning. Ghost attack — not just any normal ghost attack, a _Technus_ ghost attach, which meant the fight that ensued was six hundred percent more annoying than usual. He didn't screech out his own weaknesses for the world to hear anymore, so that was just another layer of difficulty to the situation, and with Tucker home sick, Danny's deus ex machina machine was currently lying in bed pretending to have the flu. So far the only thing Tucker had actually achieved was avoiding the English test in first period that Danny was already pretty sure he'd already flunked.

Of course one of Technus's prime targets had been their favourite cult member, and of course Danny had been forced to quite reluctantly save him. The man had looked up into Danny's eyes as he'd carried him through the sky, a face ful of rapture and joy as the sun shone down. When the cult member had thanked Danny as Wes Weston for his valiant services, Danny had almost dropped him out of spite.

Oh, and also of course — while he was out saving this total loon — the real Wes Weston had had his head smashed in with the extremely high voltage end of Technus's staff. That had been when the school was evacuated — Danny had even spotted Dash making off with some of his things on the way out, but was slightly too preoccupied with trying not to get electrocuted to do anything about it. Lancer down below seemed to run faster than any of his students — at least that was normal. And then at the end of it all, when Technus was safely in a thermos and Danny was quite sure that Weston wasn't dead (ha!), the ambulance had come and taken the poor red-haired conspiracy theorist away.

_The cult member tried to stop them._

"He can heal!" the cult member screamed, while the paramedics battled to get him away from the stretcher. "He doesn't need to go to hospital, he's half ghost! He has a ghost half! Ghosts can heal!"

_… I could overshadow him and drown him in the lake,_ thought Danny, in one of his lighter moments.

And now he and Sam were both sitting there in the empty classroom, listening to the cult member preaching gospel about all of those Holy Things in the Ghost Zone that Didn't Actually Exist. This guy was totally off his rocker — nothing he spoke about was right, he consistently misnamed even Amity Park's most common ghosts in a way that reminded Danny of Jazz two years ago, and generally speaking was begging to be forcibly removed from school property.

"Danny," said Sam, eventually. "We've gotta leave before anyone else comes back. What are they going to think if they see us still sitting here?"

"I dunno, probably that I'm Wes Weston."

"Are you _trying_ to get caught?"

Danny's arms were crossed even as he peeled his face back up off the table. "I dunno Sam, maybe I am! Maybe I'm sick of not getting real credit from this town. Maybe I'm sick of not being able to act on the fact that there's an _entire damn cult_ giving Weston all the credit."

"Ooooh, someone's jealous."

"Am not!"

Sam crossed her arms at the childish response. "What are you, two?"

"Yes!" Danny sputtered, throwing his hands in the air for emphasis. "I'm sick of this whole damn town! But fine, whatever, I'll go home, going _Jesus Christ—_!"

He did not go ghost. He also did not go Jesus Christ. It was simple, really — they'd both had this paranoid urge to look out the window as Danny was about to transform, and subsequently spotted the deranged cult member propped up upon the wooden ledge with an ancient JVC "professional" home camcorder slipped into his hand. The grin ran all the way up to his eyes.

"That's it, I quit," said Danny, quietly.


End file.
